KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – The Deputy Governor of the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ), Jide Lewis, says all banks are expected to be prepared for the increased demand for cash during the upcoming holiday season.
“I think during Christmas time, the seasonal increase in demand for currency would suggest that the banks will need to stock up additional funds,” he said.
Lewis, responsible for the Financial Institutions Supervisory Division, addressed the BOJ’s Quarterly Monetary Policy Report Press Conference earlier this week.
He expressed confidence that most automated banking machines (ABMs) will be operational this holiday season.
He noted that banks are being held to the minimum service standards for operating the machines announced earlier this year.
These standards, which increase the banks’ scrutiny but do not attract fines for breaches, are aimed at addressing long-standing concerns raised by consumers.
They provide that at least 90 percent of ABMs must be working all the time and that those that are operational must be working at least 95 percent of the time.
In addition, machines in urban or resort areas must be in cash for at most 60 minutes, while the time out of money for ABMs in rural areas should be at most 180 minutes or three hours.
Lewis said that while some banks still need to achieve minimum standards, he is confident that things are heading in the right direction.
“The standards won’t give you a world where you will never have an ABM out of service. The standards will give a certain outcome on average,” he pointed out.
“Recall that the standards say that 90 percent of all ABMs owned by a deposit-taking institution (DTI) should be operational, meaning that 10 percent at any given time may not be operational. Right now, the banks are operating at 94 percent. We think that’s pretty good. Let’s see if they can bring that up to 96 percent. But it does mean that in every given month, you could have four or five percent that will not be operational,” he said.
In addition, Lewis said operational AMBs work 89% to 90% of the time.
“There’s still room for improvement there,” he said, noting that the standards require that they should be working at least 95 percent of the time.
Turning to recovery time, he said this has fallen from six to about three hours overall. While the banks have achieved the three-hour recovery time for rural areas, it still needs to be at the one-hour requirement for urban areas.
Nevertheless, he assured that at the current service standards, consumers should experience minimal downtime or delays in getting cash this Christmas.
The BOJ is expected to roll out a new regulatory regime for the financial sector in 2026. The regime will impose fines on banks that breach the ABM service standards.
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